In his first visit to Bihar after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar joined hands with the BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on March 2 launch nationwide projects worth over Rs 1.64 lakh, nearly Rs 29,000 core of it focussed on the state.
The projects to be launched Begusarai are related to multiple sectors including oil, gas, fertiliser and railways.
Official sources said the 39 of these projects, which will be either inaugurated or kick-started with the foundation laying ceremony, are in the oil and gas sector, and 10 in the railways. Six new trains will also be flagged off.
Modi will also inaugurate the revived the Barauni fertiliser plant which will not only boost urea’s domestic production but also generate employment opportunities, they added.
The prime minister has over the past few weeks launched numerous projects, worth lakhs of crores of rupees, in education, health, rail and infra sectors as he seeks to emphasise on his government’s pro-development credentials in the run up to the Lok Sabha polls.
He has often highlighted that the speed and scale of work the country has been seeing is unprecedented.
It also jives with his agenda of making a “Viksit Bharat” (developed India) by 2047 and the assertion that the return of his government to power for a third term is essential for the development journey to continue. The launch of projects from Bihar, with many of them meant for the poor state, is expected to burnish the BJP-JD(U) alliance’s pro-development agenda at a time the opposition bloc led by RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav has sought to appropriate the plank.
Yadav has claimed that it was his presence as deputy to Nitish Kumar which was responsible for giving employment to tens of thousands of youngsters before the JD(U) joined hands with the BJP, an assertion dismissed contemptuously by the chief minister.
The rail projects, an official said, will be mostly focussed on north Bihar, the more densely populated and impoverished region. However, the rail ministry has more trenches of projects coming up in the state and they will be catering to its other regions.
Over Rs 10,000 crore of the rail budget for this year is meant for the state, the official said.
In the petroleum sector, officials said, Modi will launch a total of 39 projects costing Rs 1,49,823 crore. He will inaugurate 29 projects with a capex of Rs 89,000 crore and lay the foundation of 10 projects with an outlay of more than Rs 60,000 crore.
Modi will dedicate to the nation “first oil” from the KG Basin and flag off first crude oil tanker, Swarna Sindhu, from the ONGC Krishna Godavari deep-water (around 1443 Meter) project to Mangalore, Karnataka, marking a historic achievement, they said.
It promises to significantly reduce India’s dependency on energy imports. This project is likely to increase ONGC’s total oil and gas production by 11 percent and 15 percent respectively, they said.
